


In Memoriam

by DirectorShellhead



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: M/M, and Howard is a giant fucking bag of dicks, and Maria is actually a decent human being, and Steve is patient, but I'm tagging it as such just to be clear, in which Tony is pensive, referenced but not described in detail, the only thing that makes this MCU is the date of the Starks' death, tw: child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 05:52:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DirectorShellhead/pseuds/DirectorShellhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In MCU, Howard and Maria Stark are killed in a car crash on December 17, 1991. This is how Tony reflects on their passing, and how Steve responds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Memoriam

Each year, on a date in mid-December that neither man acknowledges to the other, Tony withdraws and Steve lets him. His side of the bed will be just warm when Steve rises, and though Steve can almost always guess where he’s gone—it’s never far—he learned long ago not to follow. Instead, he just makes sure to be there, always there, when Tony returns.

Some years, Tony remembers the tickle of a perfumed fur stole against his nose, or lacquered nails ticking against ivory piano keys as his own stretched wide to mimic the chords. He remembers kisses and whispers, gloved hands wrapped around him from behind as he sat on a tweed-skirted lap, Manhattan whipping past through the car window. He remembers the puzzled frown of penciled brows, the awed parting of perfectly red-painted lips, when he’d showed off another impossible creation. He remembers the steel-furious curve of his mother’s body standing between him and Howard; he remembers wishing he could fit inside her shadow.

He kneels before her grave and can’t ever remember her face, not as a whole, but his guilt over that has long since transmuted into something sweeter, a soft-edged sorrow through which it’s not so difficult to smile.

Some years, Tony tries to recall that small, secret grin—mischievous, conspiratorial, full of love—that his mother had seemed to save for him and him alone, but Howard’s face takes over in his mind’s eye with perfect ease and infuriating clarity. He tries in vain to shut the image out, or if it persists, to remember patience, encouragement, affection, gentleness, pride. He dissects his own memories with clinical precision, explores alternate angles, engages in differential analyses, because he is too smart, too logical, to suppose that these elements were altogether absent; he knows they must be there, stored away somewhere in his brain. But he can only ever remember fists and the sharp tang of scotch-laden breath; the silence behind every closed door that wouldn’t open for him, no matter how he’d tried; the salinity of tears. He remembers the bitterness of anger that had settled in his chest best of all because he feels it burning there still, a hot weight in the center of a void.

He will never kneel before Howard’s grave.

Always it’s been dark for hours by the time Tony comes home to the press of Steve’s fingers into his winter-chilled flesh, and sometimes it aches like an old bruise, and sometimes it’s raw and crackling like a live wire. Sometimes there is only a bone-deep numbness and he wonders how Steve can stand to touch him through it, but he always does, and he never asks questions, and Tony never speaks. He just kisses him and kisses him, kisses Steve until all he can remember is that this is what home feels like: warmth and strength, a familiar face; solace without pity; smiles without pretense; a body that knows his like a primal instinct and a mind that is forever opening his own; a love that is as demanding and intense as anything he's ever known, but without collateral damage.

And coming home feels just like this, feels just like hips slotting in against his own, feels just like legs twining, feels just like being pressed back against the wall as rough, hungry kisses emblazon memories shaped like possession right into his skin.


End file.
